PERSONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Good Life Principles – Forgiveness
“Life’s good when you have learned the art of forgiveness.” – Bryan Dodge
Forgiveness is one of the most important “whys” in your life. Hatred always fails and bitterness always destroys. We live in a time marked by litigious proceedings and heated exchanges, rather than one of forgiving, forgetting, and extending mercy to those who may have wronged us or let us down.
We have much to be grateful for such as the comforts that a modern society affords us and the privilege of living in a free and prosperous land. It would be fitting for us, as grateful people, to cultivate the ability to forgive and to accept forgiveness. Without that ability, you will always see that life’s good, but you will not truly feel it inside. We need to forgive others so that tiny molehills of misunderstanding don’t grow into mountains of destruction. In the home, parents and children hang on to old grievances for years, sometimes even a lifetime. In the workplace, business associates quarrel and refuse to compromise or forgive. So often, many people spend their days blaming others, nurturing grudges, and planning retribution. If you focus on not forgiving, you will pay a high price in your relationships with others.
French author, Guy de Maupassant, tells the story of a peasant named Hauchecome who came to the village on market day. While walking through the public square, he caught sight of a piece of string lying on the cobblestones. He picked it up and put it in his pocket. The village harness maker, with whom he had previously had a dispute, observed his actions.
Later in the day, the loss of a purse was reported. Hauchecome was arrested on the accusation of the harness maker. He was taken before the mayor, to whom he protested his innocence, showing the piece of string that he had picked up. But no one believed him and he was laughed at.
The next day, the purse was found and Hauchecome was absolved of any wrongdoing. However, resentful of the indignity he had suffered because of a false accusation; he became embittered and would not let the matter die. He thought and talked of little else. He neglected his job. Everywhere he went, everyone he met had to be told of the injustice. By day and by night he brooded over it. Obsessed with his grievance, he became desperately ill and died. In the delirium of his death struggles, he repeatedly murmured, “A piece of string, a piece of string.” Because he was unable to forgive and forget, Hauchecome gave up the good life for a life of misery.
And yet, there are those who feel that forgiveness is a sign of weakness. But it takes neither strength nor intelligence to brood in anger over wrongs suffered, or to go through life with a spirit of vindictiveness, or to squander one’s abilities in planning retribution. There is no good life in nursing grudges. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “I don’t get mad; I get even!” Although the statement is usually spoken in jest and invites a chuckle, there is nothing humorous about it. This type of thought only promotes a spirit of retaliation and one-upmanship rather than true forgiveness and the ability to forget.
Frankly, most of us have not reached the stage of true forgiveness. It is not easy to reach, but I never said the good life was easy. It requires self-discipline and the ability to let go of our pride. The application of forgiveness can be difficult to achieve, but it is even more difficult to live without.
Selfishness is the cause of most of our misery. It is a disease which can spread to the point of being uncontrollable if we allow it. Haven’t we all lived beneath ourselves from time to time? You may be able to control your behavior for a while or keep a good attitude for a short period of time, but have you ever wondered why you can’t really get free of it, why you are so angry, why you can’t get along with certain people, why you are sometimes negative when you don’t really want to be—why you are allowing the bad seeds of the past to destroy the good things that your life can bring to those around you? Remember, you can’t live with those bad seeds inside you without it doing harm to you and those around you. If you don’t forgive the people who wrong you, they don’t really care, but you need to remember that you are forgiving for your sake. You are forgiving so that those bad seeds will not continue to grow inside of you and destroy the good life focus.
Haven’t we also been in a position to extend a hand of forgiveness that both sides needed? But we don’t, because pride or selfishness gets in the way. So many of us are prone to say we forgive, when in fact we are unwilling to forget. Why do we bring up the past again and again? One of the greatest lessons one can learn when reaching for the good life is that there is no true forgiveness without the ability to truly forget that which needs to be forgotten. As one of college football’s most successful coaches, Lou Holtz, once said that the happiest person in the world is a person with a short memory. If you are truly unable to forget, which is normal, then you need to pass the final test of true forgiveness. When the memory comes to you, does it make you mad, or does it make you appreciate where you are at this moment in life. If anger is still part of the memory, then true forgiveness has not taken place, and you must learn to let it go.
Your willingness to forgive is a sign of maturity that allows you to develop the good life focus that you need to rest your mind, body, and spirit and to remain energized. This month, let’s all make a commitment to ourselves to not only forgive what needs to be forgiven, but to forget what truly needs to be forgotten, so your life and your energy can move to the next level. If you want people to forgive you, you must forgive first.
PERSONAL FINANCIAL TIP
You Have to Have a Plan
You may have already read this from me, “If a person or family does not have a debt elimination plan of some kind in place, and they are not actively working that plan, they will be in debt for the rest of their lives.” The article below, does a great job of explaining one of the reasons why this is so true. If you do not want to be in debt for the rest of your life, you need a plan. Many of you reading this newsletter already have Debtwork at your disposal. If you follow the steps laid out in the program, eventually you will be debt free. It is just simple math. Do you want to be in debt for the rest of your life? As you will find out below, more and more people are saying yes to that question. Will you be one of them?
Changing Attitudes on Debt Makes Planning a Must
Financial literacy skills are more important than ever these days, as Americans negotiate debt at every turn. Consumers may be more comfortable with debt, says a new study, but can that be healthy?
Those who believe that the only certainties in life are death and taxes can now add a third to the list: personal debt.
A new study commissioned by LendingTree, an online lending exchange, finds that living with increasingly higher levels of debt has become an accepted state of affairs in America, an inevitable and permanent feature of daily life. And since the social stigma of high levels of debt has largely evaporated, many more consumers are willing to go into debt or take on additional levels, depending upon what stage of life they are in.
For example, families are saving less for college and relying more heavily on student loans, which contribute to higher debt levels among graduates, who are entering young adulthood with more debt-both student and consumer-than previous generations. The average student graduates from college with $22,500 in student loans and credit-card debt, including $19,500 in loans, according to Cambridge Credit Counseling Corp., a debt-management firm. Moreover, 65 percent of college students carry credit-card debt, with more than 50 percent charging their cards to the limit some or most of the time, according to a recent survey funded by Oppenheimer Funds and conducted by Smith College.
In addition, the LendingTree study found that home ownership is a more important piece of the overall financial equation and that many consumers don't do long-term financial planning or even have a personal budget. Another interesting finding: Many people attribute their willingness to go into debt-or to take on additional levels of debt-directly to a dramatic increase in spending on children and grandchildren.
The LendingTree study, written by University of Rochester Institute of Technology economist and professor of finance Robert Manning, the author of Credit Card Nation, examines debt among college students, young singles, young families, mature families, empty nesters and seniors." The findings are extraordinary," says Manning. "People who live on debt have to learn to reduce their standard of living. And people have to learn to become savvy investors even when they are in debt. ...Consumers' knowledge base has lagged the information out there. Individuals in this economy have to become self-empowered and learn the skills that will become most important to them."
Americans, he says, are increasingly financing a higher standard of living—one they probably can't afford-with higher credit-card and installment loans and funds that should be going toward personal savings. "People are being told, 'It's okay. You can afford it. You deserve it. You work hard,'" says Manning. "There's a cognitive disconnect about the understanding of the standard of living they can afford based on the standard of living they want. The whole allure of the credit-card nation is that people don't feel the need to plan, yet there's more pressure for them to do so."
Manning traces the attitude shift to several factors, including the rising price of housing and a love affair with credit cards. "People are basically following the rules of the game set by banks," says Manning. "If you can make your minimum payments, you're okay. But is six years at this minimum payment a good debt? Not really." Moreover, he says, in the U.S., an average household's share of discretionary income allocated to housing jumped from 46.2 percent in 1979 to 85 percent in 2003. And that was while the national household savings rate dipped to negative 0.6 percent in the second quarter of 2005, from 8.6 percent in 1989, according to the study.
"The presumption is that consumers are rational actors, but this is not rational response," says Manning. "It's the most irrational in the world." For example, he says Americans should have had the least amount of debt in 2001, when the federal funds rate was at one percent and money was cheap. "But instead, we've seen sharply rising indebtedness since then," he says. "They are going to push themselves into financial insolvency."
Indeed, at the end of 2005, U.S. consumers had $2.2 trillion in debt, including revolving credit-card accounts and student loans, up 22 percent from 2004, when it hit $1.8 trillion. "People are also living with a false sense of financial security, due to the amount of credit extended," says Chris Viale, president of Consumer Credit Counseling, who notes that the average American has $14,000 in credit-card debt and carries an average debt load of $300 a month to pay it off. Moreover, 35 million households-or one out of five-are either over their limit or behind on payments to those accounts, he says. "They may be comfortable only because it seems the norm," he warns. "But it's not healthy at all. There is a false sense of security due to the amount of credit extended. People are living beyond their means. They don't understand the magnitude of the problem. It's so easy to get credit, and if there's any type of financial setback, they'll live off credit. We hear it over and over again."
And now that credit-card companies are mandated to require consumers pay four percent instead of two percent of balances as a minimum monthly payment, Americans may find themselves unable to keep up, warns Viale. "And because of the universal default rate, if you're late on one card, all other eight cards have the right to raise your rates," he says. As Professor Manning would say, welcome to the credit-card nation.
(c) 2006 U.S. Banker and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.us-banker.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
Sincerely,
Keith Phildius
“Working On Your Debt Matters”
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Forgiveness is freeing up and putting to better use the energy once consumed by holding grudges, harboring resentments, and nursing unhealed wounds. It is rediscovering the strengths we always had and relocating our limitless capacity to understand and accept other people and ourselves.”
-Sidney and Suzanne Simon, Co-authors of “Forgiveness: How to Make Peace With Your Past and Get On With Your Life”
BECOMING AN EFFECTIVE LEADER
The Power of Commitment
I was listening to an audio program on CD by Nido Qubein, president of High Point University, and he said something that I could not shake out of my head: “A decision is a matter of the brain, but a commitment is a matter of the heart.” I knew this was profound. All accomplished leaders are committed but now I understand the secret ingredient: heart. When your heart is not in something, it is difficult to remain focused. Yet on the other hand, when it is a matter of the heart, you can focus on little else. Apparently professional Hall of Fame football coach, Vince Lombardi, had an understanding of the word commitment because he refers to commitment as “heart power.” Coach Lombardi goes on to say that once a person has made this type of commitment, nothing will stop him short of success. The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
Don't wait for someone else to make your life terrific. That's your job. This world is full of opportunities to make a living at what you love and enjoy doing. A wish will not make it happen. The accomplishment of your desire and primary goal in life is assured the moment you make a personal commitment. When it gets in your heart and soul, it becomes a power to achieve like no other. Learn to use it for both your great and small exploits.
Once you make a commitment to something, you put the greatest strength in the world behind you. Author John Maxwell described it best when he said, “Until I am committed, there is hesitancy, a chance to draw back. But the moment I definitely commit myself, then God moves also, and a whole stream of events erupt. All manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings, persons, and material assistance which I could never have dreamed would come my way and begin to flow toward me—the moment I make a commitment.”
